Outbound Links vs Just Inbound Links

[Kiwitravel]

I would appreciate feedback on whether adding outbound links on your site (eg doing reciprocal links) has any impact (negative or positive) on your site's Google rankings & PR.

Is it better to concentrate on just obtaining inbound links to your site from other quality on-topic sites? This is what we have mostly been doing to date but I see more & more sites focusing on developing a 'Links directory' on their site with lots of outbound links (presumably mainly in return for a reciprocal link).

I have always thought that doing too many reciprocal links and/or outbound links would have some sort of negative impact on your site's rankings.

Many thanks for your advice.

[kieranhawe]

I would say 9 out of 10 times when you see a website with a link directory it is because the websites they are trying to get links from require a reciprocal link (and they are probably using a link service). The ideal situation is to have thousands of websites link to you naturally - but as most people know its tough and time consuming to get those links unless you have some real valuable content.

[Kiwitravel]

Thanks for your advice. This supports what I thought ie getting one way (inbound) links is better if possible - although as you say more difficult to do.

But I was also trying to find out what anyone knows about what impact outbound links may have on your site's PR or rankings in Google or other key engines. Is there any evidence to support the theory that outbound links will 'leak' your PR gained from your inbound links?
Other articles I have read say not and even that pages with a lot of outbound links have a higher PR than those without these.

[pleeker]

I wouldn't worry so much about PR. It's all about TR now - TrustRank. You want links from trusted sites. If those are one-way links from a trusted site to you ... you've hit the jackpot.

Reciprocal linking -- do it if you think there's value for your site users/visitors, but don't do it expecting some kind of boost in the SERPs.

Outbound links -- it's a good idea to link to authority / trusted sites in your market / industry. Linking is all about the neighborhood -- you want to try to place your site as part of that trusted neighborhood of sites.

HTH.

[kieranhawe]

A SE would rather see 100 links from websites that are related to your keyword and "trusted" then 1,000 from unrelated websites.